I believe that it is more or less 2 years ago that I bought my first horse brush – encouraged by the advice of @sgrdddy. This is a Semogue C3 Galahad premium horse brush.

Now, at least at reddit, horse brushes suffer from a bad reputation. Stinky, scratchy, a tangled mess of bristles – the antihype is strong. I must say that I rather like my horse brushes (in the meantime, I purchased another one, a Zenith XS [Xtra-Soft] horse brush), and I consider the Semogue my primary brush. I cannot really count anymore how many uses I have, but I would guess that this brush has seen between 100 and 150 uses (yes, I know, @djundjila gets 100 shaves in less than a month, but for me, that’s rather respectable.

So, here come my experiences with this horse brush.

General description

The handle is “imperial red”, which looks brownish to me. The bristles were initially dark brown, but they are getting clearer with use (and splitting).

The Semogue C3 Galahad, slightly underfocused

The smell

The Semogue (just like the Zenith horse after it) came without any smell. I am strongly allergic to horses, which was the main reason why I hesitated to buy a horse hair brush in the first place, but I didn’t feel anything with these brushes. Semogue (and Zenith) do a good job desinfecting and desodorizing their hair, and I never had the impression to wipe a horses ass over my face (as someone over at reddit described his experience).

Breaking in

The last brush I had bought before acquiring the Galahad was a SOC boar – a great brush, but a real pain to break in. Fortunately, I didn’t experience any breaking in effect with this one. I could use it confortably out of the box, and I didn’t have the impression that there was a noticeable break-in process. That being said, I would assume that there was a break in period, even though a very long and progressive one. After a year or so, some bristles started to split, and this is still an ongoing process (my macro photography skills are bad, but you can see the change in color on the photos: unsplit bristles are much darker than splitting bristles, which are light brown).

I don’t really remember anymore whether there was any loss of hair; I would assume that I might have lost the occasional hair, but not more.

Tangling of the bristles

I’ve heard that there are issues with the bristles tangling in horse brushes. To be fair, there is some slight tangling, but at the same level I also get with a Yaqi synthetic knot. (On the other hand, I haven’t seen any tangling on my Zenith XS horse, so this cannot be related to horse hair as such).

Overall evaluation

The Semogue C3 Galahad Premium Horse is a great little brush. I would recommend trying a horse brush to anybody, and this one is excellent.